


tell me a secret (that i already know)

by helahler



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellamy PoV, Canon Related, Character Study, Clarke pov, Comfort, F/M, Gen, Minor Violence, Missing Scene, POV Second Person, and also because i wanted an excuse to explore bellamy's character, because i'm curious what happened after the Exodus ship crashed and clarke fell to her knees, post Unity Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1985814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helahler/pseuds/helahler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You do not love her. </p>
<p>This is what you tell yourself. You do not know if it is the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tell me a secret (that i already know)

**Author's Note:**

> because i've fallen hard for this pairing, and because i wanted to explore bellamy's perspective, and because this show and this world is really, really interesting and i like to write about it.

You do not love her.

This is what you tell yourself. You do not know if it is the truth.

\--------

The only people you have ever loved have been your family: your mother, who used to sing you to sleep when you were sick and give you her ration when you were hungry, but most of all who brought into this world the single most important thing in your life, the axis around which your entire existence revolves: your sister. When you held her in your hands, that first time, and named her Octavia, you felt something shift in your chest – a feeling that you did not know how to name.

As you grow up, you above the floor and her beneath it, you understand what it means to be responsible for something other than your own life. You have always been a watcher; before, you did not know how to be anything else. You would watch the door that your mother keeps leaving through, how she limps, sometimes, as she slips back in when she thinks you are asleep. You watch how, on the bad week where riots break out and the rationing is particularly harsh, she gets so weak she cannot get out of bed at all (after that, you do not let her give up her rations for your sake anymore).  

Now, though, now that you have a sister and she is your responsibility and you have said the words “I won’t let anything bad happen you”, this promise is like a weight on your shoulders and in your chest. You feel the heaviness of it when it is your hands that lower her into the narrow space beneath the floor, your hands that close the door on her and shut her in the dark.

Sometimes, the guilty thought slips in that maybe things would be easier if Octavia had never been born. But you do not know if this would be true; no one else has a sibling. There are no lessons for you to follow – other than in stories that you read – and your mother does not tell you how to be a brother. It’s just another thing that you learn how to be. Or maybe it’s more like something that you wear, like the jacket you got as part of your clothing ration when you were six; your body had slipped into it with a strange sense of familiarity even though you knew, you knew it was your first time wearing it.

The collar had been frayed, you remember, from years of passing through other hands, and the too-long sleeves had taken a while for you to grow into, but it had been comfortable. With Octavia, then, with the responsibility that comes with being a brother and what that word means, exactly, it is like wearing that jacket. Except instead of being exchanged out for other well-worn jackets as you grow up, the jacket grows with you.

This is the first thing that you have had for yourself, then; on the Ark everything you have ever owned has passed through your hands just like it passed through the hands of those that came before you, and will do so for those that come after. But from the moment your mother passes your sister to you, your _sister_ , the weight of her in your hands is yours alone. There is no one else to pass it to; and even if there was – the realisation dawning slowly, like a seed taking root – you do not think you could let go.   

There are so many things that you cannot give her (friends, happiness, freedom), but you do what little you can: you try to fill the empty space where your father should be, and you try to be the type of friend that she deserves – you are, after all, half of her entire world –and you give her as much of your ration quota as you can while still staying on your feet. (You do not tell the two people that you love of the three times you pass out in guard training.)

These are the burdens you are willing to bear if it means that she is safe.

It is worth it for the look on her face when she finally steps through the door, escapes the four walls that are all she has known. It is worth it for the look on her face when she finally sees the world that exists outside the Ark – her hands pressed up close to the viewport’s window, the earth and moon and stars spread out beneath her fingertips. It is worth it for the time she finally gets to spend with people her own age, and her laughs of delight at the loud thrum of music and voices and the warmth of people surrounding her.

The weight on your shoulders is worth it to see her happy.

Then the alarm bell rings and you become a watcher again, only able to stand by and look on as this fragile moment cracks in your hands and there is nothing you can do to piece it together, and you understand, now: you can give your sister safety, or you can give her happiness. But you cannot do both.

The only people you have ever loved have been your family: your sister and your mother.

 You lose them both.

They don’t even let you say goodbye to your mother before they Float her, before she is thrown out into the vast emptiness of space, frozen forever at the moment of her death.

It should be comforting that her death was quick. You do not take comfort in it; you have dreams that it is your hand on the button, that you see the look on her face as she is Floated and there is only disappointment left in her eyes. You wake up and say _I’m sorry_ but no one hears you.

Your sister, who has spent so much of her life trapped within four walls, is sent to a place where the walls are further apart, but they are still walls. They do not let you see her again, either.

This is the summary of your love, then: it was not enough.   

\------

A man holds out a gun and tells you to kill the Chancellor. In exchange you will see your sister again. You will travel to Earth with her.

If the journey or the destination doesn’t kill you, once they find out what you have done the Ark will hunt you down and finish the job.

But you will see Octavia again. You will see your sister.

_I won’t let anything bad happen to you._ Now this promise is a noose around your neck.

You take the gun.

You shoot the Chancellor.

 

\-------

_Princess,_ you call her.

The word tastes like ash in your mouth and when she raises her voice and tells you what to do, something like dark anger rises in your chest because people like her are the reason you are in this mess and she thinks she can come to the ground and things will be the same as they were on the Ark, that she and her friend can go around telling the rest what to do, as if the influence of their parents still matters on the ground.

She tells you not to open the hatch so you open it and he tells you not to remove the wristbands so you cut them off because these two have never known what it is like to live trapped under someone else’s thumb, and now that the Ark is gone from sight, invisible and unreachable thousands of feet above the Earth, you no longer need to listen to whatever the Princess has to say. The rules of the Ark do not apply on the ground.  

\-------

_You were a good guard._ Someone told you that. What they meant was: you are good at following orders.

On the ground, the smell of wet earth thick in the air, there is no one to give you orders. You do not want the Ark to come after you, to take Octavia away from you, to punish her for her crime of being alive. You do not trust anyone else to make the decisions necessary to keep her safe. So you take charge. You become the person that gives the orders.

You, and the rest of the children on the ground that you call _your people,_ who for so long have had your lives determined by others, by the Ark’s harsh justice and its confining walls, breathe in the Earth’s clean air and realise finally, finally, you can be free.

The summary of your life exists in two chapters, authored by others, each a sub-plot in someone else’s story: _look after your sister_ , and _all you have to do is kill the Chancellor_.

So when you say _Whatever the hell we want_ , you say it with the firmness of knowing that you are finally in control of your own life. You are writing the third chapter with your own hand.

\-------

The four of you are frozen with shock, staring at Jasper’s bloody form tied to the tree; a kind of brutality far beyond what you have ever known.

Clarke is the first to move forward, pale but determined, and then suddenly the ground gives way beneath her feet and she is falling.

It is instinct that makes you reach for her, and wrap your hand around her wrist, as she does the same to you. You can feel her pulse beneath your fingers. You don’t pull her up, but neither do you let her go – and her hand is gripping your wrist tightly enough for you to think maybe she suspected that you might.

Your eyes connect – it feels like a coin has been tossed, and you are both waiting to see which side it falls on.

Then Wells and Finn are dragging you back and helping lift Clarke out of the pit, and the moment passes.

\-------

You are kneeling on the ground, and the damp from the earth is soaking into your knees, and there is a boy lying covered in burns and he’s whispering _kill me kill me please kill me_ and the knife is in your hand but you can’t. You have done bad things. You have shot a man with a gun and watched the blood pour out of the wound. But this is not the same.

There is blood in the boy’s mouth and the noise he’s making in the back of his throat makes you feel sick but your hands are shaking and you can’t seem to lift them from your sides and drive the knife in. This boy is begging you to end his suffering and all you can do is sit there and watch.

Clarke comes to you, now, and this is the moment that you begin to understand. You look to her, because you want her to tell you what to do, how to save this dying boy, but the look she returns tells you what you already know: there is nothing you can do. And now you don’t even have the strength to give him the mercy he needs.

This girl, though, this blonde-haired, blue-eyed princess kneeling opposite you – her face takes on an expression that is partly like calm but mostly like steel. You look and you see a strength you did not expect from someone like her.

She takes the knife from your fingers and her hands are soft, and move with such gentleness, that you cannot quite believe it when she slides the metal into the dying boy’s neck and hums a quiet tune as if she is lulling him to sleep.

 The blood pours out.

He sighs wetly, and then he dies.

Clarke continues to hum softly, and strokes the dead boy’s hair tenderly, and it is in this moment that you feel it; something shifts in your chest. It is not a feeling you recognise, but the sensation dredges up a memory:

_Before, Octavia used to love hearing about Earth, about what it was like, used to stay up late listening to the stories you would read her about the planet your ancestors came from, about trees and oceans and the sky and the earth. Living in hiding as she is, Octavia has never been to school, never had teachers other than her mother but mostly you. In class, then, you pay extra attention to the lessons taught to you, in the hope that some of it will lessen the vastness of all that you are unable to provide for Octavia._

_You listen with interest to a lecture on mountains and earthquakes, and you soak in the information and release it all that night to Octavia. You watch the way her eyes light up with innocent curiosity as you describe how the Earth’s crust is made of tectonic plates, and how some of these are constantly in motion even if, in their enormity, the movement is so small it can be almost imperceptible at times. You tell her of fault lines and subduction and volcanoes; of how, when the plates move too much, they can cause the very surface of the Earth to change._

This is how it feels, now: a tectonic plate within you is shifting. A certainty about this girl – about what kind of person she is, and what she is capable of – has been made into an uncertainty, because when you look at Clarke, where you expected to find fear and panic you find only strength and kindness, and that same familiar-unfamiliar feeling tugs at your chest.

Later you find yourself looking at her in a different light, and though you do not examine the thought, a part of you is aware that something has changed; somewhere deep down a fault line has been made that cannot be unmade. The next time you call her _Princess_ the word is still coloured by sarcasm, but somewhere underneath that – though you do not let her see it – a seed has taken root, and it is growing into something like respect.        

\-------

Before you have time to do anything, Charlotte moves to the cliff edge and your hand is reaching out but you know it’s already too late as she jumps and disappears into the mist.

Clarke is by your side and the two of you are on your knees, and the word that the two of you scream at the emptiness Charlotte lost herself to is the same word - a ragged _No! -_ which is torn from your throat only once but which Clarke repeats over and over again, as if it will undo the damage that has been done; this noise of pain that escapes you both, kneeling there on the cliff edge, sounds the same.  

You get to your feet, a terrible rage you have rarely known wrapping itself around your chest and your throat and your fists as you smash them into Murphy’s face again and again and again, not stopping even when you feel the skin on your knuckles splitting apart. You struggle fiercely when Finn tries to pull you away, and when you spit “He deserves to die” the violence burns in your lungs and you want nothing more than to wrap your hands around Murphy’s throat and squeeze the life from him.

Your grief and your rage are like gasoline spilling across the ground, and when Clarke pushes forward and gets in your face and tells you “We don’t get to decide who lives and who dies”, she is a spark, so close to setting the whole forest aflame. You counter, anger rising, as it is wont to do when you try to reason with Clarke, because it was her unwillingness to yield in her approach that lead to all of this.

But then she tells you “I was wrong before, you were right”, and this admission and her words that follow so unbalances you that your sharp retort is more out of instinct than true malice. She doesn’t rise to the challenge, though; while grief exposes a raw nerve in you, it has the opposite effect on her (or maybe she is better at hiding it), because instead of disagreeing with you, for the first time Clarke seems willing to work together.     

“We make the rules”, she tells you, and gives Murphy his ultimatum. You would not have believed it possible, before the events of today. Now, though, now that the two of you have kneeled on a cliff edge and been united in loss, you think that maybe, somehow, this fragile agreement with Clarke could work.    

\-------

 

You were not born with violence in you. Violence is something that grew into you, like a spore that you have inhaled. Being on the ground has exposed it to something, triggering its growth; now it has burrowed into your skin and nestled inside your ribcage.  

You slam your fists into the Grounder again and again, feel the blood pour from the skin your knuckles splits. There is a terrible pleasure in hurting someone who took something from you; this thing chained up before you tried to take Octavia and might soon be the reason for Finn’s death. But the other truth is that you are simply angry – your argument with Octavia has left things broken between you in a way that feels final – so it feels good to take it out on someone. 

Clarke disapproves up until she discovers that Finn has been poisoned by the Grounder’s knife, and the choice becomes whether to leave the Grounder alone or to torture the antidote’s location out of him.

“Do it,” Clarke tells you.

She flinches the first three times the hard metal slams against the Grounder’s chest, but she doesn’t leave, and when you pause in the torment she kneels before the bloodied man, desperation in her eyes as she begs, begs for the knowledge they need to save Finn’s life.

The Grounder remains impassive.

You tell Clarke “you don’t have to be here for this” but she refuses to leave, and this time when you hit the Grounder she doesn’t look away.   

\-------

After, when you have watched Octavia bleed and seen the way the Grounder looks at her, after Clarke has got her antidote and Finn is out of the woods, you follow Clarke out of the dropship.

The knife that you twisted into the flesh of the Grounder’s palm is gripped tightly in Clarke’s hand; gently, you pry it from between her fingers.

You tell her “Who we are and who we need to be are very different things”.

Before, she would have disagreed, would have made it very clear how she felt about your words. Now, though, the Grounder’s blood is on her palm and Finn’s blood is under her nails.

She doesn’t say anything.

\-------

“I’ve spent my whole life watching my mother heal people. If I say there’s hope, there’s hope.”

You learn, from what little she tells you of herself and other pieces that you put together on your own, that her mother is a doctor and her father was an engineer. From her father she learnt how to build things; from her mother, how to fix them. This makes sense, brings clarity to the image of Clarke that you are still trying to bring into focus.

It’s understandable, then, how she knows exactly what words to say to cauterize the bleeding wounds that are your vision of Jaha and the sight of three hundred people falling from the Ark. How she knows exactly what to say to make you begin to believe that, despite the blood on your hands, there is still hope for you.

_I need you._

Three words, ones that you have never heard directed at you.

Three words, and the knot of pain and guilt and despair in your chest begins to loosen.

Three words, like a row of stitches closing up a ragged tear, finally giving the body what it needs to begin healing.

\--------

As Unity Day comes to a close, it seems that the violent result of the purportedly peaceful meeting with the Grounders has split apart each of those involved into opposing factions, each with vastly different opinions concerning how things played out.

The only two who remain united in belief are Clarke and yourself. You stand together and watch the others storm back into camp, and the moment that follows is...comfortable, almost.

For all their differences, the Ark and the Earth have one thing in common: things follow a pattern. On the ground, the pattern is that things never remain calm for long. Something lights up the sky above you: the Exodus ship, making its way down to the ground. The sight of it fills you with wonder. You stand with Clarke, transfixed with awe.

But the ship doesn’t slow down, and your awe turns to horror as the explosion of the impact lights up the neighbouring valley.

Clarke’s legs buckle.      

\--------

You should have done something, said something, anything, to Clarke, after the ship bearing her mother exploded in a blaze of light. But it has been so long since you have given comfort; you do not remember how.

Instead, you just stood there, unsure, and after a few moments Clarke had pushed herself back to her feet and wiped her face and walked back into camp as if nothing had happened, brushing off the murmurs of the crowd that has gathered in the camp’s centre, faces turned in the direction the ship fell. You made them give her space, let her seek her solitude, and then co-ordinated with Miller the preparations for exploring the crash site once the sun came up.

By the time the arrangements were made and you’d done your customary pre-sleep inspection of the camp’s defences, hours had passed. You hadn’t seen Clarke the whole time.

Until the moment you walk into your tent.

She’s sitting on your bed, arms curled around her knees. When you come in, she gets to her feet and moves towards you, and before you have time to say anything, to offer the words of comfort you should have said before, she is pressing her mouth to yours.

It is instinct that makes you bury your hand in her hair before you can stop it, before you can think, but it takes only a moment for you to regain control, to realise what it is that is happening in this moment.

“Clarke...,” you breathe against her mouth, not pushing your own to meet it but not pulling back, either.

“Please,” she whispers, so quietly you can barely hear it, a secret, a vulnerability that she is revealing only to you, now, in this moment. “Please,” again, when you still don’t move.

 You could try to find the meaning in this moment and those that came before it; in hands held wrist-to-wrist as you caught her and didn’t let go, the brush of fingers as she took the knife from your shaking palm, and later, as you took the blood-covered weapon from her white-knuckled grip. You could try to find the meaning in _You’re forgiven_ and _I need you_ and _Please,_ because Clarke is good at doing what is necessary for the group, good at taking care of others, and somehow in all of that she was never very good at asking things for herself.

 But she’s asking now; none of the meaning matters.

You press your lips to hers. Her hands move to the buttons on your shirt and slide it from your shoulders.

\-------

Later, when the spell is not yet broken and the tent is still this tiny world in which only the two of you exist, her nestled under the loose curl of your arm, your hand traces the paths between the freckles on her shoulder, lulling her to sleep, and when you reach the last freckle you press a kiss to it before you can stop yourself – but it doesn’t matter: she’s asleep. When you go to pull away, though, you discover that there is a weight on your hand, the one you slung over her hip; her palm is curled over your wrist, fingers pressed gently to the skin as if taking your pulse.

\-------

You do not love her.

This is what you tell yourself. You do not know if it is the truth.

_\--------_

_Clarke:_

You do not love him. You know this is the truth.

But his touch is gentle and his lips are hot against your throat and he slides into you with such tenderness, his hands cradling your face like it is something precious and bringing his mouth to yours, his tongue against your lips and you let him in, you let him in, you let him in.

After, you fall asleep and you wake up and you leave the warmth of the bed and walk out of the tent. The two of you never mention it, never give any indication that it happened, and in a way it feels like it never did.

But you do remember. You remember:

_After, you both lie there in sleepy warmth, feet tangled together, and one of his arms is slung over your waist, warm palm pressed flat against your skin, and his other hand – the hand that shot the Chancellor, that tortured the Grounder, that has done so much violence - delicately traces the freckles on your back, and he kisses your shoulder, the barest brush of lips to skin, and you realise: you do not love Bellamy._

But you could.

You know that you could. 

**Author's Note:**

> so. idk if it's obvious but this is literally the first fic that i have ever written (to completion, anyway, or at least as close as i can manage), and holy frick was it difficult to write, but overall i guess i'm pretty pleased with the result. comments would be super appreciated if you have the time!
> 
> also, as you can probably tell i am super, super invested in bellamy/clarke (like, i'm kind of scared about how quickly it happened to me) and i'm currently plotting out a Bellarke Cop AU - still planning it out and it's looking to be like. at least 30k. which considering the longest thing i've written is almost 4k. **30k**. how did this happen to me. how did i get so invested.
> 
> holla at me on [tumblr](http://neenaroo.tumblr.com) if you wanna cry over Bellarke and the 100 in general (also Bellamy/Raven ( i am _into it_ ), or if you wanna prod me more about that Cop AU since i work a lot better with outside motivation (shout out to [Emily](http://philcoulson.tumblr.com) for motivating me to get this done!) or just like, holla at me in general.


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